Town Hall Reborn

Town Hall will feature an interactive timeline that spans Cedar Point’s humble beginnings as a bathing beach and bathhouse to the multi-day family destination that it is today. Planned exhibits include recreated displays of infamous Cedar Point icons, like Jungle Larry’s African Safari, the Earthquake and more.

Get the full details on this and all of today's announcements at https://www.cedarpoint.com/blog/150th-anniversary-announcement

Photo courtesy Cedar Point

Great improvement! Town Hall has been stale for many years.

So instead of a museum of quiet contemplation and study of the past, with all the fascinating postcards, signed musician photos, relics, and ancient souvenirs, we are getting a whiz-bang sensory overload airport terminal walk-past art show, meant to try and reach the “we aren’t interested in looking up from our phones anyway” demographic? Yay 🤕.

I guess the Gemini Car display was a dry-run of this new design aesthetic.

It takes an especially jaded person to see this as a negative thing.

This is great. I wonder how involved they are with any archivists or curator type folks on this project. What they have to display certainly qualifies as being "museum" worthy.

I have confidence that the actual CP relics and photographs will still be on display. What’s gone are the antiques and what-nots that had historical significance but weren’t related to CP.
I think the rendering represents the vacated area to the right as you walk through the door. It’s cute, the old rides represented are a good idea. I hope the actual artwork is good.

While I wouldn't class myself as someone who sees this as wholly negative, not at all, I don't think that means it's wrong to acknowledge that there is a certain loss. Everyone (including the park) keeps saying that the antiques haphazardly sold off have nothing to do with the park's history. I think that represents a very narrow idea of history. Roger Ebert was fond of saying that a film is also a documentary of itself. In the same spirit, things that have a long history with the park are part of the park's history even if not intentionally. Most of that stuff in the Town Hall Museum had been in the park for nearly a third of its entire existence, and it represented an era of the park – not just of this park either, but of parks in general, when they made at least some gesture toward claiming an educational goal, however superficial. The antique arcade machines had been in actual service at the park even longer, and I even remember when some of them still worked (e.g. the mechanical horse racing game was working after it moved to the museum and as recently as 2010 or so; what an amazing life at the park for that old machine!). Because of its tenure with the park and the previous park philosophy it represents, I think the old Town Hall collection had a solid claim on being historical to the park and not just in general.

I will say on the positive side that I'm glad the museum will get some signage and proper interpretation. They had already begun moving old park relics like statuary in there, but just set them down with no signs. I am hoping to see the antique J.W. Fiske statuary (e.g. Mercury and the griffin) get some nice explanatory signage.

Yeah, maybe I’m jaded, but the rendering provided by Cedar Point shows exactly zero artifacts, and a lot of empty space punctuated by benches and displays that look like they were projects by first semester graphic design students.

If you don’t like ACTUAL historical artifacts in your museums, then it’s your lucky day. Wait, I’m sorry, it’s no longer the Town Hall Museum, it’s just Town Hall; Obviously even the designers knew they were throwing out the baby with the bath water.

And Chuck Wagon, Cedar Point employs a grand total of no archivists, no historians, and no curators, and I guarantee they didn’t spend money on outside consultants. Ken Miller is the closest thing they have for any of these groups, and he will tell you personally that he had no input on the new design. The only way this happened at all was by selling off the valuable museum contents to pay for the building improvements.

I have zero confidence that this will be more than just a mildly interesting diversion to escape the heat or rain for 10 - 15 minutes.

I would be ecstatic to be proven wrong! Please let me be wrong!

It's a rendering, not a final product. I have a pretty good idea of what artifacts will go in there as should anybody who attended WCO this past February and stopped in the P&D building. What we were shown in there should be on display and probably will be. Don't get all negative based upon a silly rendering.

So - are they going to display the actual Earthquake sign? The actual Rotor sign? Or just depictions of them?

I reckon they will be painted, like a theatre set. And I doubt the originals are around anymore.

Rugrats:

You’ve had nothing nice to say in any of the 2020 topics. You’re welcome to stay away from the park this year so I’m not stuck in line somewhere hearing you complain all day. An opinion formulated out of artist renderings is also equally silly. It’s a rendering. Google the definition. Also, have you personally reached out to Cedar Point about who they employ? Has the park directly told you that they don’t employ a historian or that they didn’t involve anyone outside the park????

I’m going to guess that no, they have not.

It is amazing to me how after all these years of this website existing that people still make wild assumptions based off of such little information.

There are a few people on these forums that will never be made happy no matter what the park announces. They could give you a full scale model of something and people would still complain.

mgou58, I can’t help but point out that up until an hour ago you’ve had nothing nice to say in any of the 2020 topics since the announcement either. Just sayin. 🤔. At least he said something, however unpopular. This place gets really boring when people don’t say something.

Um...what?

Rugrats2001 said:

If you don’t like ACTUAL historical artifacts in your museums...

No one comes to Cedar Point to see vintage steam rollers (other than you, I suppose), so it makes perfect sense that Town Hall be a place to showcase the park's history, rather than random stuff that the park happened to acquire over the years.

I have zero confidence that this will be more than just a mildly interesting diversion to escape the heat or rain for 10 - 15 minutes.

Which is absolutely no different from what it was before, except for the fact that now the stuff in there will actually be relevant to the park's history.

We almost always stop in Town Hall during our visits, and I've never really understood the point. I mean, I understand why the park had those items, but it never really made sense as an attraction. We've also never seen more than a few people in there at a time, so it makes perfect sense to improve it by focusing on history that might actually be of interest to guests.

If you want to go see vintage toy trains or early 20th century porcelain novelty scales there are places better suited for that sort of thing.

mgou58 said:
Rugrats:

You’ve had nothing nice to say in any of the 2020 topics. You’re welcome to stay away from the park this year so I’m not stuck in line somewhere hearing you complain all day. An opinion formulated out of artist renderings is also equally silly. It’s a rendering. Google the definition. Also, have you personally reached out to Cedar Point about who they employ? Has the park directly told you that they don’t employ a historian or that they didn’t involve anyone outside the park????

I’m going to guess that no, they have not.

It is amazing to me how after all these years of this website existing that people still make wild assumptions based off of such little information.

There are a few people on these forums that will never be made happy no matter what the park announces. They could give you a full scale model of something and people would still complain.

So, here’s the deal.

I have strong opinions about Cedar Point because I deeply care about Cedar Point. My family has had season passes for as long as CP has sold season passes, and I’ve been going there on a regular basis since the late 1960’s. I’ve seen lots of improvements, additions, neutral changes, and yes, bad decisions and losses over those years.

Over that entire time, the Town Hall Museum served its purpose, to showcase bygone artifacts of American life in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, with some concentration of the history of Cedar Point itself. This was in keeping with the entire concept of Frontier Town, and later, Frontier Trail.

Question:

What does woodcarving, candle making, glassblowing, a gristmill, a frontier fort, a group of log cabins, and a petting zoo have to do with Cedar Point?

Answer:

Nothing. And everything.

They have exactly as much to do with Cedar Point as everything else in the park. They are part of its history, and have provided entertainment to literally millions of visitors for decades. At Cedar Point.

And I just so happen to have spent hundreds of hours inside the Town Hall Museum over that time period. I actually played each and every ancient arcade game in the place with my children when they ALL worked, bought cards out of the “what will your spouse and family be like” machine, viewed all three mutoscope motion pictures, had a Hollywood “screen test”, and had Grandmother tell my fortune. I read the signatures on each and every band leader’s photo dozens of time, examined the many postcards in depth, and wondered at the map of the peninsula divided up into building lots from before I was born.

And yes, I’ve spent uncountable hours, over many years, talking with Ken Miller and others in the museum about everything in, at, and about the museum, including exactly who has historian and archivist duty (spoiler alert - nobody).

So you could say I have an investment in the park in general, and in the Town Hall Museum in particular, and that is something I hate to see destroyed.

Ah... The offseason is in full stride. The new Town Hall sucks, Cedar Point has it's hands full with building a new bridge, the Ticket for Life people are trash, and of course the Lemon Chill guy is making an appearance.

The most wonderful time of the year!

But you still didn’t answer my question. How do you know Cedar Point isn’t taking steps to make sure the history is preserved properly and displayed in a meaningful way?

Answer: you don’t.

Why not look at the positive side of these announcements? Cedar Point can’t cater to every individual and out of all the investments they’ve made I’d say this years are by far and large the most guest experience oriented ones I’ve ever seen. Cedar Point understands the importance of its history. Just because they didn’t consult with your specific preferences/sources/people doesn’t mean they don’t care.

It’s nice that you are passionate about the parks history. But you should reserve judgement until you, like everyone else on here, see the final result next spring.

mgou58 said:

But you should reserve judgement until you, like everyone else on here, see the final result next spring.

Is it just critical judgement that should be reserved?

Or should fanfare and claims of awesomeness be reserved as well, until everyone sees the final result?

There are lots of parts of the announcements that are awesome or at least good (river boat, rebuild of front-of-the-park food venues, bands-in-residence), neutral (still trying to make Mac&cheese an amusement park food, renaming Pagoda) and puzzling (a nighttime parade & party when the park closes at 10pm and it’s not fully dark until after 9:30, and the main midway is full of people trying to leave the park?).

You very much overestimate the value of ‘history’ to the corporate management. Unless it can be leveraged for extra profits, history is expendable. And yes, I DO have inside information of that subject that I am NOT free ro share. I’m not making a value judgement about that; Business is business.

Organizational memory at Cedar Point / Cedar Fair is shorter than it has ever been. Long gone is the time when, with hard work and a clean nose, an entry level worker can make a career. How many in CP upper management have spent 20 years or more on the Point? I bet it’s fewer than you’d think. In the past few years there have been purges and losses of good people in many departments.

You know all of those non-working arcade games and devices sold in the museum auction? They are non-working because when the games service & repair employees retired, nobody had been trained to replace them and all memory of game repair was lost.

Like I said earlier, nothing would please me more than to be blown away by the new Town Hall. But even if it is, somehow, a huge improvement that I love, I still must grieve for what once was.